


Somewhere a Clock is Ticking

by ssa_archivist



Category: Smallville
Genre: Futurefic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-19
Updated: 2008-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-01 11:18:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/356106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssa_archivist/pseuds/ssa_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It will be better this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somewhere a Clock is Ticking

## Somewhere a Clock is Ticking

by averaird

[]()

* * *

It will be better this time. 

_Tick_

Lex lifts his arms, welcoming the end of his life as eagerly as he had the world's destruction. 

The whining of the complex machinery reaches its crescendo and the chamber floods with a bright white light. It blinds Lex instantly before slicing through his body; as sharp as a scalpel, but not as kind. 

He sets his jaw against the pain, unwilling to scream even though there is no one left to hear him if he does. 

The pain falls away with his body, and soon all that is left of him is thought. Thought and a formless, nameless longing. 

_Tick_

The machine was reverse-engineered from alien technology that even the scientists who built it didn't really understand. Lex never expected to have to use it, to ever want to use it, especially once everything he had planned for came to pass. 

He had never planned to be the only one left alive in the aftermath, however. Never planned to be the emperor of a cold, dead world; trapped in a body that stubbornly refuses to die. 

That the machine is intact and fully functional seems like a sign. 

He has never been a superstitious man, but he heeds it, nevertheless. 

_Tick_

Hope is the last to die. She clings tenaciously to life long after Lex thought her body could possibly sustain it; loyal until the end. 

He buries her between Mercy and Clark, digging her grave with his bare hands. His skin tears like paper, blood mingling with the thick ochre mud. 

He doesn't deliver a eulogy as he did with the others. He has no words left in him. There is nothing left in him anymore. 

Everyone he has ever cared about is rotting beneath his feet. 

The air is thick with ghosts. They burn his lungs on every inhale. 

_Tick_

Alexander could never have achieved this. Caesar never even dared to dream it. Lex is the last in a long line of men that stretches back through the millennia, men with the power and vision to reshape the world. He is the sum of them and he is more. 

There is no one left with the strength to oppose him. Nothing left but his will. 

The battlefield is strewn with the broken bodies of his enemies, and Lex stands amongst them, looking heavenward. The sky above him is an open wound that weeps blood, but it is empty. 

He smiles. 

_Tick_

Lex has held lives in his hands before and he knows that they weigh nothing. He is still surprised that Clark's is no different. 

All it takes is a nod for Mercy to put a kryptonite bullet through Clark's brain. For Hope to draw a kryptonite-coated dagger across his throat. 

It takes him hours to die: lying in a spreading pool of his own blood, breathing slowly becoming shallower and more laboured as the darkness leeches the warmth of the sun from his body. 

Lex does not look away. Every memory he has of Clark is precious, even this one. 

_Tick_

Even naked, Clark is never defenceless. 

When Lex withdraws from him and leans forward to steal the kiss he should no longer want, Clark wraps his hands around Lex's neck; his thumbs a steady pressure against Lex's windpipe. 

Clark's eyes are flat and cold as they meet Lex's, and his fingers twitch but do not tighten. He could tear Lex's head clean from his body just as easily as he could snap his neck, but he hesitates. Even now, he hesitates. 

Lex does not. 

He reaches down and presses the button at the side of his bed. 

Green light flares. 

_Tick_

Clark offers himself to Lex - martyrs himself with his body - to save his wife and cousin. 

But Lois is already dead and Kara will not last the night. Will probably not last another hour. 

The broken bones in Lex's arm grate as he grips Clark's hips, but the pain is distant and hazy, like the sun viewed through water. 

Although Lex knows that he loved Clark once, that knowledge is even further away than the pain. That he has never stopped wanting Clark is something he cannot deny. 

Nothing can stop him from taking what he wants anymore. 

_Tick_

The JLA obviously thought that Superman was the only member who could hope to reason with Lex. 

They were wrong. 

Within minutes of his arrival, Lex has Superman bound in kryptonite chains; completely at his mercy. 

Superman appeals to Lex's better nature with one breath and condemns him as a monster with the next. Lex presses the butt of his gun against Clark's temple, and lets the familiar words wash over him with an equanimity he has often faked, but never truly felt before. 

Clark's opinion no longer matters. Soon nothing will matter. 

Still, he cannot shoot. 

That will come. 

_Tick_

Lex nods and smiles through yet another of Superman's lectures, giving the expected responses to the customary cues. 

Superman frowns at him, clearly suspicious of Lex's unusually placid acceptance of his appointed role, but leaves without questioning him further. 

Lex watches him until he's lost from view, and then returns to his computer. He pours a glass of scotch and savours it as he reads through his notes, double-checking details that he has been able to recite from memory for months. 

He already knows the plan is foolproof. 

This is the last time he will have to suffer Clark's disappointment. 

_Tick_

For a time, Metropolis was his. 

He had reinvented himself once again, and was welcomed back to the city of his birth with open arms; named its favourite son. 

Its favourite son, until an alien clad in a red and blue costume sweeps down from the sky, saving people as effortlessly as breathing. 

Impressed despite himself, Lex tracks Superman down and extends the olive branch; asks that he work for him. 

Clark says no. He doesn't even pause to consider the question. He looks straight through Lex, mouth twisted with distaste. 

Lex had thought he understood hatred before. 

He hadn't. 

_Tick_

The light that was Lex Luthor, that is the very essence of Lex Luthor, speeds across Smallville. Years and miles stream spool rapidly beneath him - unnoticed and unmourned - becoming little more than a blur. 

Finally, he reaches two figures on the bank beside a small river: one lying supine and motionless, the other leaning over the first, his beautiful face creased with concern. A quiet tableaux, which would probably be unremarkable to any other such traveller, but to Lex it is a beacon. It is everything. This moment is the fulcrum around which his life has turned. 

He descends. 

_Tick_

Lex slips easily into the cold body beneath him, their two forms melding together so completely that Lex knows he will never be able to wrench himself free again. The mind of his younger self resists his entry, however. Resists his memories. 

_I can't be this_ , he thinks, forcing them away, _I could never be this_. 

And Lex is tired; nothing left of him now but ancient grief and one last, desperate wish. _Remember_ , he whispers as he fades, gifting himself with knowledge that was hard-won and came far too late. _Please remember_ , _or someday these will be your memories_. 

_Tick_

Lex coughs, the muddy amniotic fluid of his rebirth streaming from his nose and mouth. 

He looks at his saviour and, for an instant, the man - no, the boy - before him is both a stranger and someone he has known for what feels like a lifetime. 

He blinks, and the odd sense of deja vu lessens, but doesn't fade. 

Something that feels strangely like elation, strangely like hope, tightens his chest. 

"I could have sworn..." He shakes his head. The words don't feel right. "I know I hit you," he says, reaching out for Clark, "but I'll never tell anyone." 

_Tock_

It will be better this time. 


End file.
